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Quick! Write it down!

22 Monday Apr 2013

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tumblr_lzsvrhiDWw1r7gx3ao1_500Instead of calling it “writer’s block” or “lazy” I have decided that in all reality, including Alternate Universe reality, when I am posting less often than I have set up for myself I am actually taking the time to be extra creative!  I’m being so creative, in fact, that I’m completely fudging up the mother’s day presents that I’ve been working on.  I also have been watching a fair few makeup tutorial videos on youtube.  Oh, and I finally got my nails done.  They are a very pretty blue, like a dusty sky blue, and even the nail tech said he liked the color.  It feels very spring to me.
I guess that what has really been on my mind is the idea of starting from scratch.  It’s easy to say that you are willing to start from scratch if you are talking about a project, but when it comes to rebooting your entire life it can feel really difficult.  It can seem like a punishment for persuing a path that didn’t work out, which I feel like I’ve been doing for years with just about everything in my life.  But it doesn’t have to be a punishment.  It can be an opportunity for change, for growth, for finding the path that God has for you that leads where you don’t expect it to.  Being able to accept that I have to give up dreams of what I want is critical to being able to accept what God is giving me now, and the ways he is trying to guide me. It can be really disheartening to think of all the things that I have given up or the time that I feel was wasted.  But ultimately every path I’ve taken, every step I’ve walked and every breath that I’ve breathed has been designed by a good creator to bring me to exactly where I am.  The reasons are above me, as in I don’t understand them and maybe I never will, but as much as that scares my human heart I chose to believe that these reasons are part of a plan that is better than what I could put together for myself. As silly as it may seem, part of what has helped me come to this place in my mind and heart was seeing the Goo Goo Dolls in concert this weekend.  The lyrics of their music and the way they put their songs together are what I like to lovingly refer to as Epic, and Johnny Rzeznik is by far my favorite voice forever and ever, in case anyone was wondering.  During the show they played music from their upcoming cd, including a song called Come To Me.  Johnny said it was one of those songs that “makes me want to grow a beard” and said “someone told me today that this song is enriched with vitamins… I think he was smoking the marijuana.”  It’s a catchy tune that has influences of the current folk style bands, reminding me of The Lumineers and Mumford and Sons, but it’s also very Goo Goo Dolls.  This song made me absolutely die, for real, because the lyrics were so incredibly sweet and uplifting, and they include in the lyrics a call to the singer’s (Johnny’s) beloved (Me, obviously):

You and me, we’ve both got sins
I don’t care about where you’ve been
Don’t be sad and don’t explain
This is where we start again

You can find a live version of the song here.

So now I am trying daily to chose to be exactly where I am, attempting not to constantly long for what I want but to want what I have, and to allow life to be this strange journey.  I am trying to remember that every day I can chose to start again, to make different choices and learn to love in different ways.  It’s scary, it’s strange, it defenetly goes against my nature, but I am asking God to help me hold on to the truth, that He knows my heart and what is best for me in this moment.  And I don’t mean to be overdramatic by any means, but so does Johnny Rzeznik.dirty

Taking Things Too Seriously

08 Monday Apr 2013

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Knope Assault

I have a considerably undesirable personality quirk that gives me the ability to become super worked up over something incredibly unimportant. This happens most often at work, where it is not effective or constructive.

My current job is one I view as temporary, because it has absolutely nothing to do with where I want to be in life. I’m bratty about it, I know. It fell in to my lap thanks to my brother. It’s not very difficult and I try to do my job well for the most part.

One day one of my coworkers and I got in to a disagreement because of communication problems. By communication problems I mean that he didn’t listen to me. I clearly explained what his fault was and took responsibility for my own, because I knew that he had a point in his argument, and also that I was right.

What got me amped up though was that he told everyone else in the office and outside of it that the situation was all my fault! All of a sudden, for someone who couldn’t care less about their job I was super pissed off about work! I felt victimized, and since I was so obviously without a doubt right this must be a blatant attack on my character and work ethic! I could do this kid’s job better than he could!

Pride goes before destruction,
a haughty spirit before a fall

I was obviously taking myself very seriously. When I calmed down and started to consider why I was even mad I realized that I was suffering from an inflated ego. My pride had gotten out of hand, and as someone with a pride problem I am starting to realize that it will not save me from injustice or being mistreated or acting like a big jerk.

When the bible talks about pride coming before destruction in Proverbs 16:18 it doesn’t necessarily mean that my life will be destroyed and that I’ll lose my job and everything important to me will burn up in a random fire… What does end up getting smashed to pieces is the ivory tower of pride I have built myself up on, and the fall from the nose-bleed seats is very humbling.

When it comes to the attitude I should have at work, I try to remember pretty much anything from Ecclesiastes. In chapter 5:19&20 says

…to whom God has given wealth and possessions and power to enjoy them, and to accept his lot and rejoice in his toil—this is the gift of God. For he will not much remember the days of his life because God keeps him occupied with joy in his heart.

Rejoice in your toil so that your heart will be so filled with joy that you can’t remember your bad days? This is something I have yet to master. I’m so bad at it that I have considered getting the word rejoice tattooed on my arm somewhere really visible so that I will be reminded all the time. Does anyone else struggle with rejoicing through what might be called stupid situations?

dirty

Self-Harm Awareness Day

01 Friday Mar 2013

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imageToday, March 1st is National Self-Harm Awareness Day.  You can read all about it on sites like this one, can read a very honest example of depression on Hyperbole and a Half.  Post Secret is also a good place to find cathartic confessions and resources.

Personally, I had no idea this day existed.  I’m pretty sure I realize it once a year after the fact, missing any chance to feel like I could help the cause or what not.  But this year, somehow, I’ve managed to find out about it on the very day and refuse to waste an opportunity to tell a small story and speak a big truth.
When I was 16 I started cutting myself with a really cool little knife that my parents got me in Vermont.  It was somewhere between a jackknife and a switch blade, and it had a cool fox on it.  I really loved that knife, but I really hated myself and my life, so I decided to start cutting myself.
Actually, come to think of it, I really loved life.  It was myself that wasn’t working for me.  I went to church and youth group faithfully, but felt an incredible amount of guilt and shame for not being a better Christian.  I was a smart kid, thirsty for understanding, and in a spiral of self-condemnation that would only get worse as I got older.  One thing that I have found to be true about self-injury or self-harm is that you can do it without cutting yourself.  One person I know would rub ice and salt on their arms to burn themselves without cutting.  Another would develop a vicious cycle of anorexia and bulimia.  Even drinking can be seen as a version of self-harm when done in excess.
I don’t have deep scary scars.  I have light small scars.  I stopped by the time I got to college unless I was really upset, it was a backup to make sure I was receiving the punishments that I thought I deserved.  My thoughts were so skewed that I thought Christ wouldn’t mind if I made sure that there was enough punishment on myself for His sacrifice to be worthwhile.  I didn’t understand the gospel at all.

“For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” – John 3:17

The burden and weight of sin isn’t for us to shoulder, it’s one that Christ has already taken up for us.  He doesn’t ask us to feel guilt or shame, he asks us to let him shoulder what is too heavy for us, what drags us down into the pits of depression.
I think that it was when my best friend in the entire world discovered that I had cut myself, long after I thought I had grown out of it, that I knew it was unacceptable.  The pain across her face was worse than the pain I had been going through and attempting to expose on my body, even just for myself.

“And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’  The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” – Mark 12:30&31

The second is just as important as the first: to love your neighbor as yourself.  People see this as a really good excuse to throw themselves into service for others, to treat others “the way they want to be treated”, which is more often than not translated into “treat others way better than anyone, even you, treat yourself”.  But that’s not what it says here, it says to love your neighbor as you love yourself, which would imply that the same way you take care of yourself, the same way you minister to yourself, the same way you let Christ hold all of your life together by trusting Him, these are the ways that we should love each other.
In a nutshell, 1. There is no wound, physical or emotional, that Christ cannot heal.  He meets us at our worst, even though He is the best, and loves us regardless.  2. Loving each other is never easy, and neither is loving ourselves at times.  But it’s possible, through the grace of God, to be available to others as a safe haven, and to be kind to ourselves.20120611-101941.jpg

Happy 2013.

17 Thursday Jan 2013

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tumblr_m4e8nbQADc1r50vbpo1_400I recently read an article about using identity based habits to stick to goals and have started trying to wrap my brain around using this kind of thinking to stick to and possibly even achieve my goals for 2013.  My goals for 2012 didn’t all pan out, but they did carry through and I would like to keep myself focusing on some of them.  Looking back at them should bring me a little bit of satisfaction in the changes I’ve made in my life, but honestly it is a little discouraging.  I’ve been wrapped up in a cocoon of bad habits in an attempt to numb myself to the tempest of emotions the recent changes in my life have brought about.

These recent changes, consisting of moving from MA to ME to live with my family, getting a job at an oil office and a dear one departing, have come about really quickly and consist of everything that I’ve been trying to not have in my life for the past 2 years.  I didn’t want to come home.  I didn’t want to leave my community, the state I’ve been calling home, the public transportation system.  I wanted to work in a salon, I didn’t want to put effort into getting a cosmetology license so that I wouldn’t use it.  I didn’t want someone I care for to die.

As a consolation, moving home and not working in a salon have become such trivial issues when compared to the death of a loved one.  Anything that can comfort me, like having a place to live and a job, have become parts of my life I can hold on to.  These simple things can remind me that God hasn’t forgotten me, that He is still working on me and with me and that He still picks me up and puts me where He wants me to be.  I try to remember that daily, that He is good and for me, because when I don’t I remember the catastrophe that tipped the scales in favor of this plan.  I remember that someone is missing, and he won’t be coming back.  I catch myself thinking of things to tell him and then I remember that he’s dead.  He will die over and over again for the rest of my life.

I have been rereading The Sky Is Everywhere, by Jandy Nelson, a story about a girl whose older sister dies suddenly.  I can’t read it all the time because it brings up the rift that developed with much expediency over Christmas between me and my sister, as well as the kind of mourning that I’m in denial about going through.  It’s comforting though to see that I’m not the only one who becomes irrational and unhinged after someone dies.  I am not the only one who sees facade or fear and can’t stop from pointing it out.  I have taken stock of my life and decided to make some of my goals synonymous with priorities, and to put them in their proper order.  These goals/priorities have become even more like the ones I had as a child, which could be progression or regression, depending on the day.  One of them is “Don’t be afraid to start from scratch” and it seems to be exactly how I’m starting my year off with in some ways.  I’ve also decided that I will not hesitate to be honest as often as I have in the past.  There is so much that can be resolved, discovered, sorted if people would start saying what they mean and feel instead of what is proper and polite.  Confrontation doesn’t always mean a fight, it can mean a revelation.  It also means being a little more honest with myself about what I want.  Not that it’s helping anything.  My head is a scrambled mess and my heart is a sea shell at the bottom of the ocean.

“Let me just unsubscribe to my own mind already, because I don’t get any of it.”

So while I am trying to become a little more like the kind of person that I want to be I have come across some obstacles.  They are mostly made up of my own habits and decisions, but I refuse to let that stop me.  I also sometimes refuse to try to change, but I have started slowly to build upon habits that will change the kind of person I am.  For instance, I’ve started eating more salads.dirty

Dynamic Life

31 Monday Dec 2012

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DEREKIn November my brother Jake and I got to take a drive to Logan airport.  The GPS on his phone sucks, and he didn’t listen to me when I would try to direct him, so we had to turn around a few times.  We just wanted to be at the airport before Derek landed. 

Derek and Jake had been the best kind of friends for 10+ years.  We all met in church, and they ended up going to the same private school before going to the same public high school.  Derek and his family even moved into a house around the corner from us at one point.  Derek and I had always gotten along just fine, and he knew that if there were something rebellious going on who to call.  He seemed to be a fixture in our lives not because he and Jake spent all of their time together, but because they didn’t have to.  They had ups and downs over the years but had finally found their balance by the time Derek joined the Coast Guard.

The weekend before I started Cosmetology school, the last weekend in February, I went home to visit my best friend.  We stayed at my parent’s house, and my brother was on a trip to New York with our former foreign exchange student Larissa.  On the same day that she left to go back to her life I found out that Derek was having a party that my brother was missing, because he was back for some reason I can’t remember.  My father, who was in the Coast Guard, had found out a bunch of information about where he would be going and looked up as much information on it as he could, printed it out and gave it to Derek in a Coast Guard folder.  My dad, who hardly likes anyone, loved this kid.

Luckily I had my “big girl” camera with me so I took pictures during the party and before the party dispersed I took some pictures of Derek with his friends, with my mom, and someone took a few of him with me.  Then we made a plan, Derek and I: to pick up Jake at the airport and pick him up together.  We went our separate ways to finish out our family business, which means he went and spent time with his family and I watched TV and ate something at my house.  When he showed up to our house he was exhausted.  Later, while he was visiting his family for thanksgiving, he explained to me how little he slept at home because he was trying to fit in as much with as many people as he could.  He crashed on our couch for a while, and then I woke him up and we took my dad’s truck to get Jake and Larissa.  On that drive we got to catch up, talking about the past, touching on relationships, what we were reading in the bible, how our families were doing, hobbies, what his experience in the USCG had been like thus far.  I told him I would write him and he was stoked, his love for writing letters coupled with his love for people made it a perfect parting gift.

When we got to the airport we didn’t have to wait long for Jake and Larissa, and I could tell that Jake really liked that Derek was there.  I also knew that he was really not happy about missing Derek’s party earlier in the day. 

When Jake and I were at the airport in November we were picking Derek up so that he could surprise his mother with being home for Thanksgiving.  In return, Jake decided to surprise Derek with my being there to get him at the airport.  In the 10 or so months that he had been gone we had exchanged a handful of letters (his letters absolutely destroyed, and I always got them on a day I needed some extra sunshine), and he made sure to call me every once in a while as well.  I hate talking on the phone, but I always tried to stay on the phone with him as long as possible, to really connect with him so that he wasn’t wasting his minutes, to challenge him to keep in the Word (which he did).  He would tell me about his adventures, about how life was on the boat, how hard it was to find any real believers, about what he was reading in the bible, and about where he was heading next. 

When he came across the baggage area I managed to get a video of him, heading over with his carry-on.  He came straight for me to give me a hug, but I shooed him away so I could get him and Jake on camera.  The video is short, but his smile is so big. 

I put the phone away and gave him a hug, and then we proceeded to get his luggage and to head to the car.  He told me he wanted to show me something, and pulled out from his bag a large throw blanked. 

“Isn’t it cool?  See, it’s got the Coast Guard crest and the name of my boat, USCGC Munro WHEC-724… Isn’t it neat?  Do you like it?  It’s for you!”

He tossed it to me.

“Whaaaaat? No it’s not, what?  You didn’t get this for me.”

He was all smiles. 

“Yeah I did!  Oops…”

He grabbed it back.

“Let me see that for a second…”

He ripped the price tag off.

“Ok, there you go!  Yup, it’s for you!”

They took me back to where I was living, and ended up staying to hang out for about an hour, Derek and I catching up and Jake playing with my computer.  We agreed that while I was home for thanksgiving we would hang out again, which we did.  We made cheeseburgers that were extremely delicious and he let me read some of his poetry and give him some honest opinions on it.  When he left there were hugs.  Jake spent more time with him while he was home. 

I have always hated the military.  I told Derek not to join out of selfish reasons.  I was sure that he would end up going overseas into a troubled area and getting himself shot.  I had heard too many stories; I didn’t want this boy to get into harm’s way.  I realized on his visits home that he wasn’t the same boy I had known before, that he had been growing while he was away.  He wasn’t a kid with a sunny disposition anymore; he was a man with sunshine in his soul. 

I shouldn’t have worried so much.  Derek didn’t get himself shot.  He slipped and fell off a mountain.

On December 22nd Derek went to climb Mount Barometer alone and went missing.  On December 25th Rescuers found his ice ax and skid marks 2,200 feet up the 2,450-foot mountain.  His body was discovered 1,000 feet below that point a few hours later.
It doesn’t matter how well anyone knew Derek.  If you knew him at all, you grieve losing him. 

I have been struggling with two things during the past week.  First, something I have always struggled with when people die, is how much I am allowed to grieve.  There are so many closer to his family, so many who were closer to him.  What I can say is that Derek cared for each person in his life, and that is why so many are mourning.  He loved his family, especially his little sister Mercedes.  He genuinely cared about people and what was going on in their lives, each person he knew.  He was a supremely loyal friend, and even when he couldn’t feel the love from others he was usually giving it to them anyway.  He had a heart that just ebbed and flowed with the best kind of love, the one that is seasoned with mercy and grace. 

The other thing I can’t wrap my head around is why this happened.  I keep asking God but I haven’t gotten a straight answer.  He has, though, reassured me of something.  I will never wonder about how much Derek cared for me, because he made sure to leave tangible evidence of it with me while he could.  I think that he may have been smarter than the rest of us, because he sent as many letters, experienced as many memories, and gave as many gifts as he could to make sure that the people he cared about knew without a doubt that he was intentionally holding them in his heart. 

“He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.  I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God’s gift to man.  I perceived that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it. God has done it, so that people fear before him.  That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already has been; and God seeks what has been driven away.”  – Ecclesiastes 3:11-15

I don’t understand how to navigate all of this, so I am trying to as gently and as harmlessly as I can.  Most of the time I push it away, but just like the night he gave it to me, every night his blanket keeps me warm.dirty